


As If I'm Living

by samalander



Category: Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins, Star Trek (2009)
Genre: F/M, Gen, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-31
Updated: 2011-12-31
Packaged: 2017-10-28 14:42:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/308963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/samalander/pseuds/samalander
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jim isn't surprised when his name is called at the reaping, not when his father was a Victor and his brother has already died in the games.</p>
            </blockquote>





	As If I'm Living

**Author's Note:**

  * For [theoreticalpixy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/theoreticalpixy/gifts).



> A birthday fic for theoreticalpixy, with thanks to emmypenny for typo corrections
> 
> Title from a quote: "I don't feel as if I'm living unless I'm killing myself." - Russell Hoban

Jim Kirk was nothing special.

Well, that was a lie. Jim Kirk was the son of a Victor, which he supposed made him special, but since his father had been dead since before he was born and he had never technically lived in the Victor's Village, it didn't seem like he was all that special.

It wasn't hard to admit that, for Jim. He knew there were people who wanted him to be special, people who wanted him to have some kind of talent because his father was a Victor and because his brother died in the Games, but Jim was happy being ordinary. He was happy in the cornfields, happy kissing Carol, happy in District 11.

Was.

But now Jim was on a train for the first time ever, the fields and the hills sailing past him like birds.

The reaping had been, well, expected. Old Polyeuctus Gimcrack, District 11's chaperone since anyone could remember, had smiled as though he was doing them all a favor as he felt around the reaping balls for names. The girl was someone Jim didn't know, and he planned to keep it that way. She was 14 and her name was Violet. He watched her mount the stage, no volunteers appearing because they never did, and he wondered how she'd die.

And the boys had been no different. Jim had always expected his name would be called one day, it was the way things worked for the Kirks. His father had been a victor, his brother had been called at 12. And now there was Jim, all of 17 and in his last year of eligibility. Like they wanted to stretch his hope just long enough before they stole his life.

"James Tiberius Kirk," Polyeuctus had pronounced every syllable of his name like it was a fine chocolate, and Jim had honestly felt his heart skip. But he swallowed and made his way to the stage, ignoring the whispers from his friends, the anguished cry from Carol. It didn't matter now, it barely mattered at all. None of them would take his place, and none of them would speak of him when he was gone, like no one ever spoke of Sam.

His goodbyes had been heart-rending. Winona just sobbed, her shoulders shaking in agony, until the time was up, when she slipped the ring she wore on her thumb - his father's wedding ring, he knew it, onto Jim's finger. It would be his token, then. Maybe it would inspire nostalgia in some rich benefactor. Probably not.

Gary Mitchell, a boy Jim had known most of his life, came to say goodbye, an awkward few minutes for the two boys who had always felt something they knew wasn't welcome in this world, and when Carol came, she sobbed almost as bitterly as Winona had. But she would get over it, of course she would, and she would grow up because she was 18 now, and she would fall in love and move on. It was the way of things.

Jim shook his head sadly, back on the train, as a knock roused him from is reverie.

"Jim?"

He had expected it to be a Capital guard, or maybe even Old Polyeuctus, but it was Chris Pike - Chris Pike who had been his father's mentor, Chris Pike who had wept in their kitchen when Sam was killed, Chris Pike the Victor. His mentor.

"Hi, Mr. Pike."

"None of that, son. You call me Chris."

Jim nodded. Okay. They were going to pretend to be friends. He could handle that.

"Do you need something, Chris?"

"Time for dinner," Pike said, stepping aside to let Jim pass.

Jim tried to pretend he didn't hear Pike's voice get tight, his throat close with emotion, but it was there, and Jim was pretty sure that, when he died, Pike would spend another night crying in the kitchen with Winona.

* * *

The other reapings were interesting, if uninformative.

The Careers - tributes from the richer districts - didn't look terribly big, but the boy called Nero and the girl called Nyota from 2 and Leonard McCoy from 4 were terrifying in their own ways. Pavel Chekov, a 12-year-old from 3, had something up his sleeve, and the boy from 12, Spock SomethingOrOther, was handsome enough to give Jim a run for his money in the sponsor category.

There were a few surprises - the girl from 6, Gaila, cried. The boy from 1, Hikaru Sulu, didn't look like a Career, and no one volunteered for him, and the boy from 9, Montgomery Scott, was downright _odd_ in a way Jim couldn't put his finger on. He didn't relish killing any of them, but he knew that, one way or another, they would all bleed out someday.

* * *

He spent the rest of the train ride in a threefold plan: avoid the hell out of Violet so he didn't have to think about killing her, eat as much of the food offered as he could fit into his mouth without getting sick, and pump Pike for as much information as he could glean.

On the first two, he was moderately successful. Violet was equally uninterested in knowing him, and her mentor, a woman called Glynnis who had won four years before, was strange and off-putting. Jim knew she was never quite the same after winning the games; he remembered the rodents in her arena that would creep into the sleeping bags of the Tributes and gnaw on their flesh, and the insects that burrowed into the wounds and sent up stinking infections. Glynnis won only by being smart enough to leave what bread she had around the Career camp, insuring they were swamped by the vermin, and then waiting for them to weaken before she snuck in and killed them as they slept. She'd lost most of her fingers in the games, he remembered them turning black and gangrenous on his screen, but she still managed to sport needle-bruises up the insides of her arms, Morphling to dull the ache of surviving.

But that wasn't an acceptable thought, and Jim pushed it away.Victors were happy, well-adjusted people who never cared that they had killed 23 other people. That's why his father-- well, best not to think of the sad state of affairs for the Kirk men.

Chris had good advice, when Jim got him to talk. He was a reticent bastard, the walls of too many lost mentees thick and thorny, but he knew a thing to two.

"You're pretty enough," he said, "and strong. You know the Careers band together before the games start. At training. Get in with them, you might not die the first day."

Jim took that to heart.

* * *

There was nothing to report in the remaking - Jim was dubbed "downright Capital" by his prep team who didn't do much more than suppress his facial hair and clean his face, and his stylist, a wisp of a woman who identified herself as Capulette, dressed him as a whimsical stalk of wheat. The less he thought about that, the better, but he still felt less idiotic than Spock from 12 in his miner's outfit, or McCoy from 4, who seemed to be the mast of a ship. It was all stupid, some kind of game the Capitol got to play while, in the districts, the people starved.

Jim was pleased at the recap, but not overly so. He had a fair bit of attention, a little more screen time than most, but McCoy and Spock had devilish good looks, too, and Gaila was just stunning. They had power plants in 6, and she sparkled with electricity, outshining even her male counterpart. There was something about a natural redhead that the Capital loved, something effortless about Gaila's beauty. Jim wondered how he would watch her die, the weak little girl crying on the stage at her reaping, all of 15 years old.

Jim tried not to think of Carol's tears, or his mothers, or, God help him, Gary's, and how they must have felt watching him parade through the city, a lamb led to slaughter.

"They should really dress us all in wool," he mused out loud, and Pike spared him a glance.

"Watch your words, Jimmy," he said, making a vague gesture with his hand. It was the language of the fields, the way they communicated when they were too far away for even the mockingjays to carry song, by arm motion. This one was rarely used, because it was always true. _We are being watched_.

"We should talk strategy," Jim said, rather than acknowledging this grim truth.

Pike nodded, resting a hand fondly on Glynnis' shoulder as he stood. "Glyn," the name was tender in a way that Jim had never heard Pike be - clearly there was a camaraderie between these two, even with the years that separated them. Victor's club, he guessed, the cult of the Survivor.

Glynnis looked lost, her eyes deep and empty. Jim almost felt sorry for Violet, that she was stuck with someone so useless on her team. He hoped she was at least killed before she starved.

"Don't forget to tell Violet about training," Pike said, and when Glynnis nodded slightly, Pike smiled and led Jim down the hall.

They waited until they were in Jim's bedroom, the bedroom where he would sleep his last nights away before the arena, before he died.

"Okay, training," Pike said, huffing a breath and running his hand through his close-cropped silver hair.

"Why is she like that?" Jim asked, not expecting an answer. He knew, he knew that anyone who went through a Games like Glynnis' would be shell shocked. Pike opened his mouth to respond, but Jim cut across him quickly. "Question withdrawn. Why _aren't_ you like that?"

Pike shook his head. "I have a lot of flaws, Jim, a lot of things wrong with me. Just because Morphling isn't my drug of choice-"

"How did you win?"

"I killed the other Tributes. How are you going to win?"

"I don't know."

Pike nodded. "Okay, what are you good at?"

"Kissing," Jim said, and he was only half joking, really. He was an accomplished kisser. "And harvesting grain, and-" he sighed. "I don't have any damn skills, Chris, I'm-"

"If you say dead," Pike warned, his voice icy cold, "I will walk out of here and let you be that way. Don't you dare give up, Jim. Your father did it. Your father killed three people at the Cornucopia, survived an earthquake, and amputated his own arm when he was trapped. I dare you to do better."

Jim blinked. He wasn't sure what better meant in this case, and he was pretty sure Pike was equally clueless. Was he going to have to amputate both arms? He decided not to ask.

"I guess I can use a scythe, " Jim offered.

"Okay. There will be booths in the training room, they'll teach you things. Look at the edible plants, that's the most important thing, learn to feed yourself. Learn to start a fire. And then learn to wield a blade. Pay attention to who watches you. And choose a Career you can stand to kill, and then make him your best friend."

Jim nodded. "Okay."

Pike turned to leave. "Get some rest, Jim. I promised your mother you would look good on TV."

"Chris?"

"Yeah?"

"I don't wanna kill anyone."

Jim felt young, helpless in that moment. He had been riding the adrenalin of the past three days, since the reaping, such a spiraling high that he could barely remember any of the moments he had lived through. But now it was coming home. He supposed it was the reality of the 22 new people, the hot blood and solid bone and soft flesh that made up his competition, and the realization that, like Sam, he was going to have to try and kill actual people. Real, actual people.

His heart hurt.

"Get over it," Pike said, not turning to face him. "Because I also promised your mother that I would get you home vertically, not horizontally. So get used to the idea that you're going to kill someone. Go step on some bugs. You're winning this thing, if it kills _me_ in the process."

Pike left then, his footsteps heavy on the plush carpet. Jim would never be sure, not really, but he thought he heard Pike's voice catch in his last speech, thought it might have broken with the same kind of emotion he had heard on the train.

He pushed the idea away. It wasn't useful to dwell in fantasy, not when there was so little reality left.

* * *

The interesting part of training, for Jim, was the number of little nuances he picked up on just by watching, like how McCoy seemed to be an outsider in the career group, how Spock was calm and methodical in the face of every weapon, how Uhura seemed above it all. And the career group was ruled by the unpleasant boy from 2, Nero. Jim decided that he would be the one, the one that would be his best friend. The one he would have to kill.

Once he made the decision, the rest was easy. He made it clear how capital-I-Important he was, without ever showing how smart he could be. He talked about his work in the fields, how he knew how to poison people, made up stories that highlighted his strength and downplayed his mind. It was sickeningly easy, and by lunchtime on the second day, the Careers seemed to love him. It was all about kissing their asses, telling Nero how smart and brave and strong he was, and never letting it show how much he despised the man. They all ate it up.

Except for McCoy.

McCoy was a strange beast, a shockingly gentile boy for District Four to have produced, and when Jim sat next to him in the training room, each boy trying to coax a bundle of twigs into a conflagration, he felt something forbidden in his stomach. Something like he felt for Gary, for Carol. Something like-

Well, best not to say what it was like, not when those depth-less hazel eyes might be the last thing Jim ever saw.

So when it was clear that they were being called out to show the Gamemakers what was what, when Nero and Uhura and Sulu had all gone, McCoy and Jim sat alone at the lunch table, the girl from four having distanced herself from them, and neither boy spoke.

Jim wanted to say so much. He wanted to say he was sorry, that he was glad to have met McCoy, that he was hoping they didn't have to kill each other. But instead he concentrated on his hands, his cracked, older-than-they-should-be hands, and hoped that, somehow, he could impress the Gamemakers.

Finally, McCoy cleared his throat. "My dad was a healer," he said, his voice low and growling. "And I know some of the plants they've warned us from. So do me a favor, Kirk?"

Jim raised an eyebrow but said nothing. "When I make tea for Nero, whenever that may be, don't drink yours."

Jim had a thousand questions then, things he wanted to demand of McCoy, but the other man's name was called, and he was gone.

* * *

Jim's own session wasn't particularly good, but neither was it particularly poor. He stood for a full minute in silence, staring at the Gamemakers, who were getting restless, picking at the long table of food in front of them.

Jim waited. He had all the time in the world.

Finally, after what seemed the longest time, the Gamemakers stopped burying their noses in food and peered out from their balcony. One coughed.

Jim smiled to himself. "I am James Tiberius Kirk," he said, "Disctrict 11. My father was Victor George Kirk, and my brother was Sam Kirk. You met him too."

There was a murmur from the balcony, but none of them spoke. Jim went on. "I am not going to show off for you. I am not going to play this game."

He had more to say, things about his father and his brother and no-win scenarios, but the hard hand of a Peacekeeper closed around Jim's bicep, and he flinched as he prepared himself for a beating, for a bullet, for something to shut him up. Instead he was marched into the elevator, shoved roughly through the gaping doors, and sent back up to his rooms.

Pike was waiting, of course, wanting to hear what Jim had done what moves and motives he was working. Jim just smiled. "Nothing fantastic," he lied, "I threw some weights, showed off a few sword moves, and gave a little talk on plants, like we discussed. Nothing overly impressive."

Pike nodded. "Well, we'll see your score tonight, and in the meantime, I think Capulette needs to do something about your facial hair before the interviews."

* * *

Jim got a 6 in training - a solid middle-of-the-road score on the one to twelve scale, and he was glad they rated him so highly. He had figured they would either give him a 1 to insure no help, or a 12 to paint a target on him, but the 6 was an easy way to stay out of the spotlight.

The interview was nothing special, not for Jim. He was charming enough, could get a tracker jacker to give him honey with the right words, and so prep was easy. The hard part was sitting through everyone else's, before it was his turn. Uhura was smoky and sultry, Gaila was sweet and bubbly, Nero and Sulu were simply brutal.

And McCoy. Jim searched the Tribute's back, while he talked to Caesar Flickerman, the voice of the interviews for as long as Jim could remember, looking for some sign of the man who had promised to murder Nero for him.

McCoy was grumpy but endearing, and that spark of danger, the idea that he was actually capable, was completely absent from the interview. Jim wanted to wonder what game he was playing, but before he had time to puzzle it out, Caesar was saying his goodbyes to Janice form District 10 and calling Jim's name.

"So, James," Caesar began, smiling. "Tell us about yourself."

Jim tried to relax. "Oh, me? I'm just a boy from District 11, Caesar."

That set off a smile, and a volley of questions about his family's luck; apparently the story the Capitol wanted to tell about Jim was that of a boy beset by destiny. Well, good luck to them, Jim had his own damn story to tell.

"You know," Jim said, the emotions playing across his face as the seconds ticked down, "I barely remember my brother, and I never knew my father. The thing I'm most worried for, Caesar, is my mom. She's all alone back home, and I don't want her to lose another son."

"Well, then, you'll have to win for her!"

Jim smiled, what he hoped was winningly, "I guess I will," and it didn't matter, right then, if it was the truth or not, because the buzzer sounded, and Jim could see tears in some of the audience's eyes.

* * *

Pike was happy about his performance, but what Jim really wanted to know, his mentor couldn't tell him. He wanted to know what McCoy's game was, what the man was after. Instead he ate and tried to sleep.

It was a night of tossing and turning, interrupted around 6am by his prep team, there to, as Renard the hair guy said, "make him TV ready." Jim did himself the favor of not vomiting on him.

The hovercraft picked him off the roof, weird current in the ladder compelling him to freeze but rise, until the tracker was implanted in his arms. The games, he guessed, were beginning. How long they flew he wasn't quite sure, but it seemed like it might be days before the windows blacked out and Jim's stomach began to churn actively.

In the subterranean world below the arena, Capulette helped Jim into his clothes - a set of lightweight, muslin trousers, a soft cotton shirt, boots of animal hide, and a jacket that was more like a collection of blankets than any garment he'd ever seen, all of it beige and yellow, shifting colors. There was also a head covering, a scarf of sorts, that could be pulled up to cover his face and nose.

"Looks like desert," Capulette said, settling the scarf around Jim's head. "Make sure you find water. And shelter. Cold nights."

Jim nodded. He had no feelings, one way or the other, for this woman, but he was still appreciative of her time and attention. He was just sorry he wasn't going to give her the satisfaction of a Victor, of getting to design for the tour.

"Thank you," he said, and she blushed. For the first time, Jim looked, really looked at this woman, her skin dark like tree bark, with silver tattoos spiraling across her face and arms. She was really quite pretty. Her hair, standing out from her head like a cloud, had been died a vivid purple shade that, Jim thought, just made her silver inlays pop more.

She produced the ring his mother had given him from a pocket somewhere, and slipped it onto his right ring finger, where it fit without slipping off. "Good luck," she told him, and a female voice filed the room, announcing launch time. Jim stepped on the plate, ready to face the 23 people who would probably kill him.

* * *

The 60 seconds of waiting were excruciating. Capulette had been right- the terrain was desertous, with hot winds whipping across it and blowing sand into his eyes. Ahead of him, almost the same color as the sand, the cornucopia stood, tall and golden and brimming with the weapons and water that would mean the difference between death and another moment of existence.

Jim knew what to do, knew that, when the buzzer sounded, he was to grab the closest blade and defend Nero, Sulu and Uhura as they took first pickings. Stand back-to-back with McCoy, killing anyone who was dumb enough to attack. He didn't want to- instinct told him to run and hide, let these brutes kill each other until they had been weakened and he could sneak in and win.

But there was safety in numbers. So Jim let his body move independently of his mind when the buzzer sounded, racing up the dune as he saw Gaila and Spock turn tail and run.

The melee was intense - Scotty from 9 and Chekov from 3 seemed to have something worked out, because they both raced for the pile in tandem, and Chekov coldly cut Christine Chapel, from 1, off at the knees while Scotty grabbed what he could, and they beat a retreat.

By the time the sand stopped swirling and the blood was spilled, they had lost Sulu and Chapel, eliminating the contingent from 1, but the boy from 6, both from 8, the boy from 10, Violet, and the girl from 12 also lay dead on the ground. Jim was sad for Violet's family; she was so young, and so sweet. But he was alive, and Nero was ordering them to fall back, to find shelter for the night.

It wasn't easy, with the shifting sands under their feet, but after walking for a few hours in a direction McCoy promised was due east, their little band came to a small copse of trees. It looked safe and well insulated, but more than that, the smoke rising from between the branches of the trees meant that it was inhabited, and the person inside didn't know any better.

Jim would have felt sorry for him, the boy from 5, if he hadn't been bedecked in someone else's blood. At least one someone. As it was, the canon sounded shortly after Jim slit the boy's throat, and after the hovercraft came to remove his body, the four of them - Uhura, Nero, McCoy and Kirk - moved into their new home.

They laid low that first day, trying to preserve water in the sweltering daytime sun. The cannon sounded twice more, bringing the death toll to, by Kirk's count, 12. Half gone on the first day alone. Whatever was out there, besides sand and sun, it wasn't something Jim wanted to meet anytime soon.

The anthem brought with it the pictures, adding the girl from 3, the boy from 7, and the girl from 9 to the death toll. Mentally, Jim made a tally of who was left. Nero and Nyota from 2, Chekov from 3, McCoy and the girl from 4, the girl from 5, Gaila from 6, the girl from 7, Scotty from 9, Janice from 10, Kirk, and Spock from 12.

Nyota and Nero agreed to take the first watch after the parade of corpses and, restlessly, Jim slept.

* * *

He was woken halfway through the night, told to take watch with McCoy, and so he did, both of them huddled against the cold in the blanket-coats, staring into the distance.

"Did you mean it," McCoy asked, when the moon was starting to set, "about your mother not losing another son?"

Jim wanted to laugh. Talking about family wasn't done in the Arena, it reminded the viewers in the capital that these were people, real ones. Jim was sure they wouldn't be shown talking. Jim wasn't even sure Winona would know if she lost him, she was probably halfway through whatever moonshine she could get her hands on by now, and more than drunk twice over. It was what she had done with Sam. But Panem didn't need to know that, so Jim shrugged. "Yeah. It's been hard for her, losing dad and Sam. What about you? Got any family?"

McCoy touched his token, a woven strand of sea grass looped around his arm. "Yeah, a mom who just lost her husband, and a girl, Jocelyn."

Two widowed mothers one- or both - of whom would never see their son again. Jim didn't say anything, didn't ask any more questions, because if he had to kill Leonard, it was going to kill him in return.

* * *

By the end of the third day, Jim was getting antsy. They had tried to take out a few people, and the sand had been rather helpful. The winds came at night, but if you caught between, in the roasting daylight, footprints were everywhere. It helped that there was no water source that the Careers could find, so the other Tributes tended to wander towards the Cornucopia, looking to slake their thirsts. Day two had brought the death of the girl from 4, McCoy said her name was Arielle. Jim pretended he didn't care.

Late in the day on three, a canon sounded while Jim was trying to work the strange brown fruits with the heavy shells that grew on the trees in their copse. Nero and McCoy were napping, and Uhura was on guard, so he knew it wasn't one of them. He wondered if they had competition, or if the thirst finally felled someone.

* * *

Days four and five brought two more deaths each- Spock from 12, the girl from 7, the girl from 5, and the Janice from 10. Jim suspected that the Gamemakers had made a mistake with too much arid space - the audience would grow weary of watching the kids die slowly. They wanted blood, bone and guts, they wanted sacrifice. And there were only seven people left to get it for them.

* * *

On the evening of the 8th day, the sun falling into marzipan clouds that would bring no rain, the Careers were attacked. They had expected a Gamemaker plot - snakes or mutted out rodents or something equally repellent, but their fellow Tributes had something better.

Jim would never know how they had built it, but Chekov and Scotty must have been working hard on their strange contraption the entire time they were in the Arena. It rolled on uneven wooden wheels, like a car, but Jim was sure there was no engine to propel it, and those inside could fire small darts, probably poisoned, through little tubes in the front. They had lost Uhura, who was sleeping when the attack came, to a dart and the crush of those massive wheels. Her cry of pain was still sharp in his mind, like a knife in Jim's gut. He hadn't liked her, not like he did McCoy, but he had respected her. She was smarter than Nero by far, maybe even smarter than Jim, and he hadn't been sure that, if it had come down to her and him in the final two, he would be able to kill her before she sprung her trap.

So they retreated, letting the two boys in their contraption have their copse, and the supplies within.

It would have been the end of them, McCoy, Nero and Jim, because they had no water and there was no way to penetrate the hard outer surface of the tank - it looked like a tank in a history book - to get to those who would attack them. But Leonard, brilliant Leonard, waited until the moon was rising on their new camp, in the shadow of the Cornucopia before he pressed a solid object into Jim's palm and leaned in.

"Jim," he whispered, and his lips centimeters from Jim's ears sent a shiver down his spine. "It's wood. Dry wood."

Jim nodded. The tank thing was made of wood, sure, but he wasn't sure-

He glanced at the thing Leonard had handed him. A book of matches.

"If we burn it," he whispered back, "we could lose the supplies."

"We already lost them," Leonard said, "and Scotty and Chekov - they're smart with machines, but I don't think they'd have thought to leave the copse and cover their tracks. There won't be time yet."

"We'd need something to help it catch," Jim mused, out loud, "lighter fluid or something. No way we get it to catch without."

It was as if Pike had been waiting for that moment, of all moments, to send the little silver parachute falling from the sky. Or maybe it was Leonard's mentor, or Nero's, Jim would never know. But it remains that the parachute fell, and what was attached was a small container of clear liquid.

"Water?" Leonard asked.

Jim unscrewed the top and sniffed at it. "No," he said with a smile. "Kerosene."

* * *

They woke Nero to tell him the plan, and he regarded both of them for a long time. After this was done, when they had killed Scotty and Chekov, it would be the final four - them and Gaila from 6 - and it would be time to break the alliance. But for now, there was revenge to be had.

They waited for the moon to set, for darkness that would have been complete if not for the stars, and the three boys made their way back to the copse where they had last seen their nerdly competitors. It was cold and the wind was biting, but Jim manged to work up a sweat anyway, from the anxiety, if nothing else.

Chekov and Scotty weren't fools; they had set up a perimeter of some sort that, had they not been watching, Jim's group would have triggered it, waking the others immediately. As it was, the wind moved pieces of the traps - bits of metal from who knew where - with enough force that it was easy to find, and avoid, the traps.

And that was how Jim found himself, on the dawn of his 10th day in the Arena, lighting a match to start a fire.

The boys who held their old camp we no idiots, but neither were they fighters. Apparently unaware that their rivals could make fire at all, they had chosen to sleep in the tank. And full of self confidence from their victory and the clever traps they'd placed, they set no guard. So it was easy - too easy, but they were tired and hungry and _young_ \- to douse the thing with half the liquid they'd been sent.

And Jim lit the match.

He'd never forget, for the rest of his damn life, the noises that emanated from inside the tank, the screams of horror, the pain, the downright terror when they found the door blocked.

And the smell, of burning wood and searing meat. Jim knew now why they were called the Hunger Games. Cause if you got through, you'd never want to eat again.

When he couldn't stand it anymore, when the tableau of human suffering was too great, he set out. It was time to break the alliance, anyway, why not get a head start, rather than losing what lunch he did have on the sands.

"Jim!" McCoy was calling for him, and Jim faltered in his step.

"This is over, McCoy," he said, not turning.

"I know," Leonard said, but he held out a pack, one the packs from the Cornucopia, with water and food and a sleeping bag in it, and he smiled. "Hope I don't see you," he said.

Jim's hand tightened around the handle of his blade, thinking that, at this point, it would be easy to kill anyone quickly, that they had murdered Chekov and Scotty so disgustingly that they all deserved to die.

But when he moved for McCoy, it was not for the kill.

Jim‘s lips found McCoy's, warm and dry and tasting of ash, for the brief moment of piece between them, the moment when Jim loved him the way he loved Gary, the forbidden, secret way that no one in the Districts would ever embrace. Love was for marriage, marriage was for making babies, babies were for the workforce and the Games. You loved someone to make offspring with. You could sleep with other people, but it was frowned upon, in a world with so small a population, and Jim didn't care. He wanted McCoy in a way he had never wanted Carol.

The kiss was brief, chaste, but it held the promise of more.

"Jim, I-" McCoy was going to say something now, something like he was sorry, but he never got the words out. Instead he went limp in Jim's arms, like a puppet with his strings cut.

"McCoy? McCoy!"

The canon went off in the same moment Nero started to speak.

"Sorry, Jim," he started to say, raising his knife, the bade red from the blood gushing from the wound in McCoy's leg. He had cut an artery. That fucking monster.

Jim lost all sense, all reason, and lunged at Nero, teeth and fingernails and sword all scrambling for the other boy's face.

Nero stepped back, held out the knife, and let Jim impale himself.

The pain was unimaginable, and Jim pictured himself as an apple, cut open on the table, red on the outside and white flesh bright on the inside. He smelled something awful, something coming from him, and a little voice told him _He knicked your bowels. All that filth in your body is spilling out._ He fell backwards, into something warm and sticky - McCoy's blood, or his own. Desperately, he reached out, seeking the firm flesh of the boy he had hoped for, but McCoy was too far, too dead, too gone.

Jim wanted to fight, wanted to pull the knife out of his gut and throw it in Nero's face, but the world was getting darker, the dawn sky like an old movie, no color in it at all. He knew it would be hours, still, that if Nero didn't step in and end it, there would be plenty of time for him to lie baking in the sun, dying. And he deserved it, for burning Chekov and Scotty, for watching Uhura kill Violet, for slitting the throat of the boy from 5, whose name he didn't even know. He was glad to die in the Arena, rather than to go home and play the part of someone who enjoyed this.

Nero smiled down at him, pulling a knife from his belt.

"Don't worry," he said, kneeling next to Jim. "I won't let you die of that. I have too many other wounds I want to inflict."

Jim felt the knife point tracing up his neck, across his skin, coming to settle just above his left eye.

"You won't need to see, anymore," Nero said, a cruel grin playing across his face. Jim wondered what had happened to this boy, what would it take to make someone so eager to kill, but his thoughts were gone in a flash as Nero reared back and plunged the knife into his eye.

The pain was white hot, but Jim felt it like it was happening to someone else. He forced his right eye open, forced himself to stop screaming, tried not to give the views of Panem the agony the Capitol wanted. He wasn't even sure how he was still conscious through the pain, but he was, and he could see it all like it was happening to someone else, broken body, tear tracks, empty eye socket. He stared into the sky, waiting for Nero's killing blow.

That's when he saw the flashes. One was silver - a parachute, maybe, or his soul leaving his body. The other was red, like blood or bricks, and it collided heavily with Nero, throwing him from Jim's side.

It was the girl from 6, Gaila, her hair singed close to her head, and her skin, once almost green in translucence, now red and blistered from exposure - to sun or chemicals or heat, Jim didn't know. What he knew was he was dying, and what he hoped was that Gaila would win.

The silver flash - it was a parachute, then, landed next to Jim's hand and he grappled for it, wondering what in the world Pike would send him now, what could stop him from dying.

It was a long tube, and a single dart.

A blowgun.

Jim loaded the weapon, using the last of his strength to lift it to his lips and raise his head. Gaila and Nero weren't far from him, locked in hand-to-hand combat. She was stronger than she looked, and faster than he was, dodging his blows to race back in and rain punches and slaps on his body.

Jim knew who he wanted to live, who he wanted to win. He inhaled shakily and blew. The dart struck Nero in the leg, below his right knee, and he reached back to rip it out, giving Gaila the right moment to slip in and land a decisive uppercut to his jaw.

The toxin or the hit, whatever it was, Nero was down. Gaila snapped up the knife that she had, at some point, batted from Nero's hand, leaned over, and cut his throat. The cannon might have sounded, Jim wasn't sure, because the blood in his ears was too loud, too much, for him to tell.

Gaila walked over to him slowly, as though she was worried he might lash out. It made Jim want to laugh, the idea that he had the energy to even hit her at this point.

"Thanks," she whispered, kneeling next to him. "That went quicker then I thought it might."

Jim nodded slightly. "Please," he croaked, his throat dryer then he thought it would be.

Gaila took a shaky breath. "Close you eyes."

Jim smiled as the blade of her knife danced across his throat and the cannon marked the Game's final casualty.


End file.
